Saving Seafood

New Bedford again tops nation for dollar value of fishing catch

October 31st, 2016 — The city’s port has again topped the country for dollar value of its fishing catch, NOAA Fisheries reported this week, citing 2015 landings worth $322 million.

That marks 16 years in a row that New Bedford has held the top-value title, which is thanks largely to scallops. Dutch Harbor, Alaska, again was tops for total volume of catch, landing 787 million pounds last year.

New Bedford’s catch was much smaller: 124 million pounds, good for only 11th in the country and far behind Dutch Harbor. But Dutch Harbor’s catch had a value of $218 million — second-highest in the country — reflecting the strong commercial value of New Bedford’s scallop industry.

“The scallop industry has put New Bedford at the top of the food chain, as it were, of fishing ports for the last 16 years — that’s a very impressive streak,” said Ed Anthes-Washburn, port director for the city’s Harbor Development Commission. “It really shows the impact of scallops but also the impact of cooperative research.”

In the 1990s, SMAST scientists Brian Rothschild and Kevin Stokesbury pioneered innovations in counting scallops, with cameras tested and used on local scallopers. The resulting data affected stock assessments by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ultimately leading to larger catch quotas and helping secure steady catches for waterfront businesses.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times 

Alaska fisheries escape effects of climate change for now

September 22, 2016 — With coastlines eroding, temperatures rising, and sea ice retreating, Alaska is feeling the effects of a warming planet. But a new federal report suggests fisheries in the state haven’t experienced many observable impacts of climate change so far.

Commercial fishing in Alaska is a multi-billion dollar industry. For 18 consecutive years, fishermen have hauled more fish into Dutch Harbor than anywhere else in the country. But at this point, researcher Terry Johnson says climate change isn’t a hot topic in the industry, even though it could affect young fishermen.

“We aren’t talking about next year, but we are talking about within this century or within the working lives of young people who are just coming into the fishery now,” he said.

Johnson says interest in the topic is growing among fishermen.

As a researcher for Sea Grant — an offshoot of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — he’s synthesized hundreds of scientific papers, interviewed scientists and stakeholders, and combed through popular media to compile this report.

Read the full story at KTOO

Unmanned vessels deployed for Alaska ocean research

June 6, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Researchers in the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast will get help this summer from drones, but not the kind that fly.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and private researchers are gathering data on marine mammals, fish and ocean conditions from two “autonomous sailing vessels” built by Saildrone, an Alameda, California, company.

“Think of a 20-foot outrigger canoe with an airplane wing sticking up from the middle,” said Chris Sabine, director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, at a press teleconference Friday.

They hold great appeal for researchers because they’re far cheaper to operate than research ships and they can work in dangerous conditions of the North Pacific.

“Imagine the TV series, ‘Deadliest Catch,’ and you can imagine why we would like to remotely gather this information,” Sabine said from Seattle.

Operating by solar and wind power, the vessels can carry 200 pounds of instruments. Two were deployed last week from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. Part of their payload will be acoustic gear that can pick up the sounds of North Pacific right whales, one on the most endangered animals on the planet.

Read the full story at the New Jersey Herald

For Alaska fisheries, reason to celebrate 40 years of Magnuson-Stevens Act

April 12, 2016 — April 13, 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law that took U.S. fisheries management in federal waters from being virtually non-existent to becoming a global model of sustainability.

Nowhere is this truer than in Alaska, where our fisheries have an international reputation as being among the most sustainable and valuable fisheries on the planet, largely thanks to the collaborative and inclusive management process set up under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. One of the MSA’s authors, our very own Sen. Ted Stevens, had an extraordinary vision for our nation’s fisheries, especially for those in his home state of Alaska. Many elements of the State of Alaska’s fishery management are woven into the fabric of the MSA.

The results? Our state produces 60 percent of all seafood harvested from U.S. waters. The Alaska seafood industry is the number one private employer in the State of Alaska, contributing an estimated $5.9 billion to the Alaska economy, and producing more than $4.2 billion first wholesale value of wild, sustainable seafood annually. For nearly 20 consecutive years, Dutch Harbor has been the top U.S. fishing port in volume of seafood landed. In 2014, Alaska ports took the top three spots in the nation in volume of seafood landed (Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, and Aleutian Islands). Other Alaska fishing ports — Alaska Peninsula, Naknek, Sitka, Ketchikan, Cordova, and Petersburg — ranked in our nation’s top 20 ports by volume.

Read the full opinion piece at the Alaska Dispatch News

Pacific cod eating seabirds, study shows

November 9, 2015 — You could call it revenge on the birds.

While many marine birds are well known for their skills at diving into the sea to pluck out fishy meals, there is now solid evidence that some Pacific cod have turned the tables on the avian species.

The practice came to light a few years ago when seafood workers in Dutch Harbor noticed that some of the cod they were processing came with extra features — partially digested birds in the fish stomachs.

Scientists from the Alaska SeaLife Center and University of Alaska have now examined remains of 74 birds collected from cod stomachs in 2011 and have some findings described in a study published online in the journal Marine Ornithology.

The bird remains come from cod caught in the Aleutian Islands region, off Cape Sarichef in Unimak Pass, using trawl and pot gear. The fish were processed at the UniSea plant in Dutch Harbor; the plant froze the bird remains and sent them to the scientists for analysis.

There have been other known cases of big fish eating small seabirds elsewhere in the world, the new study says, and past surveys by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have turned up, in very rare instances, bits of birds inside cod. In one case, a NOAA researcher found a murre foot in a cod stomach.

But the evidence from Dutch Harbor appears to be the first documentation of Pacific cod making a practice of eating birds, said study co-author Tuula Hollmen, science director at the SeaLife Center and an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

 

Report: Gloucester, Mass. landings down, but worth more

November 2, 2015 — The volume and value of U.S. seafood landings remained flat in 2014, while the declines locally in volume and value have leveled off from the ear-popping decline experienced the previous year, according to NOAA’s Fisheries of the U.S. report.

According to the annual report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Gloucester held serve at No. 22 among U.S. ports in volume of landings, but declined to 26th (from 25th last year) in the value of its landings.

New Bedford, riding the lucrative success of its scallop fishery, was ranked as the nation’s top revenue-producing port for the 15th consecutive year. It generated $329 million from the 140 million pounds of fish landed in 2014, but that was down 13.2 percent from the $379 million in value from 2013.

Dutch Harbor, Alaska, reported a catch of 762 million pounds, and came in second for value, at $191 million.

Nationally, U.S. ports landed 9.5 billion pounds of fish in 2013 worth $5.4 billion. That represents a 4 percent decline in landings and less than 1 percent decline in value.

“The overall trends from landings and value for U.S. wild-caught fish is positive even though landings and value are down slightly from last year,” said NOAA Chief Scientist Richard Merrick, who said the declines all fall within the range of statistical error.

Local data

For Gloucester, the report’s data produced a mixed bag, with a slight decrease in landings offset by a slightly higher value from those landings that NOAA primarily attributed to a strong pricing year for lobsters.

A year after losing about 25 percent of both the volume and the value of its landed catch, Gloucester in 2014 landed 61 million pounds of fish, down slightly from the 62 million pounds landed in 2013 and drastically below the 83 million pounds landed here in 2012, before the current slide commenced.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

 

New Bedford once again nation’s No. 1 dollar value fishing port

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — October 29, 2015 — New Bedford remained the No. 1 port in the country for the dollar value of the catch, NOAA Fisheries reported Thursday.

It was far ahead of the second place finisher, Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

In terms of weight, New Bedford improved from 130 million pounds in 2013 to 140 million pounds in 2014, good for ninth place.

The report put the value of New Bedford’s catch at $329 million, thanks largely to scallops. Dutch Harbor reported a catch of 762 million pounds, and came in second for value, at $191 million.

Read the full story from the New Bedford Standard-Times

Former Dutch Harbor Fisheries Observer Keith Davis Missing At Sea Off Peru

October 26, 2015 — With crab season under way in the Bering Sea, some 70 crab boats are bobbing around Alaska’s Bristol Bay and the Aleutian Islands. About a dozen of those boats have a fisheries observer on board. The observers keep tabs on what the boats haul up from the deep.

Keith Davis was supposed to be one of those observers, but he went missing in September while working on a boat off the coast of South America. KUCB’s John Ryan reports.

TRANSCRIPT

Davis has been a fisheries observer for more than 15 years. His employer says he was planning to return to Dutch Harbor this winter to do more observing work.

But Davis vanished while working on a transshipment vessel about 500 miles off the coast of Peru. He disappeared one afternoon while a boat was offloading tuna to the Taiwanese ship that he was working on. The ship sailed under the flag of Panama.

The Panamanian government, the U.S. Coast Guard and the FBI are investigating his disappearance. Davis’s friends suspect foul play.

Goodman: “Absolutely do.  For a number of reasons.”

Lynn Goodman is a fisheries observer and a friend of Keith Davis.

Goodman: “I met Keith in our Dutch Harbor bunkhouse while we were both observing on crab boats.”

She says Davis was exceptionally safety conscious and there’s no way he would have been on board a ship without a life jacket, let alone just fall off unnoticed.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at KUCB